Technical specifications and engineering drawings typically convey a variety of information about a to-be-fabricated structure, such as a part or an assembly of components. Examples of such information includes information about geometry, materials, finishes, connections, hardware, special processes, dimensions, tolerances, and others things as known in the art. The documents are prepared by engineers; however, manufacturers (i.e., fabricators) rely on the documents for manufacturing preparation to build the desired structure, such as a part or an assembly of multiple components. There are differing skill levels involved on both the engineering side and the manufacturing side, which has led to a gap between the two stages involved in fabricating a structure.
Various changes in engineering and manufacturing have generally driven fabrication cost estimates to be created from the hardcopies of the documents, which causes several problems and disadvantages. As an initial matter, each estimator, i.e., the person developing a price quote for a particular part or assembly, will often interpret the information in the hardcopies differently due to their level of experience and/or other factors. Thus, using hardcopies, it can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to maintain consistent pricing. Additionally, human reviewers can overlook key features on the hardcopies such that they are not included in the finished part and/or assembly. There is also often a lengthy time period required for quoting prototypes. All of the required documents may not be available using the hardcopy approach, and fabricators can be forced to use only the information that the engineers supply, which may be incomplete. If additional information is needed, further communication between the estimator and the engineer is required. Additionally, human interaction is required, which leads to errors and discrepancies between analyses performed by different people.
Also disadvantageously, using a hardcopy approach, preparing the paperwork for information not related to the drawings is often more time-consuming than designing the structure itself. Advanced calculations are needed to determine various information, such as, a perimeter length, flat area, holes sizes, flat size, sheet usage, etc., needed to create a cost estimate when employing hardcopies. Furthermore, missing information can typically only be obtained by contacting an engineer, which is time consuming and inefficient.